The Payoffs Of Fear I've made a pretty big claim - a claim that upsets many people. I said all you have to do is demand fear to leave, and it will. (Notice I didn't say it would stay gone!) Still, that's a pretty confronting statement. It's like I'm pointing a finger at you and saying, "It's all your fault! Just snap out of it." Which is not my intention at all. Believe me, holding the power of choice over fear offers good news! It's not an indictment of weakness on your part, but rather an opportunity. This is where the rubber meets the road. The bad new? You're forced to look at the situation a lot more closely. You see, we all have payoffs for being afraid. The greater the fear, the greater the payoff. There's a lot more to understand about fear than just payoffs, and you'll still need to work the various techniques we'll be covering... but knowing your payoff for being afraid helps clear the table; it sets the stage for those techniques to be more effective. So what exactly is a payoff? It's like a bribe that you're getting paid under the table. It's what you secretly pay yourself. It's what you secretly want to happen - what you secretly INTEND to have happen - even though you may say otherwise. The more loudly you proclaim you have no payoff, the harder it will be to change things. (That's why I force myself to always look to my own payoff first - in ANY problem or situation.) Here are the major payoffs: 1. Avoid something. We all have a tendency to avoid responsibility in one way or another. If fear stands as a matter of choice - if I hold the power to feel it or not, that means I must be responsible for my fears. It's so much easier to believe fear holds power over me. Then I get to avoid responsibility and avoid dealing with it in a mature way. I get to avoid making choices. I get to avoid taking a stand. I get to avoid all those things that might expose me and risk humiliation. When you look at it that way, avoidance doesn't seem so bad! Who wants to risk humiliation? Maybe the fear's not so bad after all... But there's a price to pay for avoidance: a lack of freedom, a lack of creativity, and a lack of creatively generating your reality the way you want it. 2. Blame. With fear, you get to blame anything and everything under the sun: "It's the news on TV that's making me scared! It's my parents' fault. It's the terrorists, the communists, the liberals, the angry drivers, the bums in the street, the Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the neighbors, the lack of affordable health care, the trial lawyers, … it's YOU! You're doin' it to me!" Some people become addicted to blame, and couldn't go a day without it. A day without blame becomes like a day without sunshine. Blame, like any other payoff, compares to getting a brand new American Express care, going hog-wild with it, and never giving a thought to how you'll pay it all back. It's a cheap thrill to blame, until the bill comes due. The price you pay for blame: You find it much harder to love or accept yourself. Your confidence lags, and your ambition suffers. 3. Righteousness. When you're really scared, you get to justify ANYthing - any behavior you want - because, hey - "I really AM scared!" I can be as righteous as I want, and hide behind my fear. I have the right to do anything I want because of my fear. "I said I was scared, now you deal with it!" It's fun to be righteous, in a pathetic sort of way. But the price? You're not being real. You're a phony. You miss out on what it feels like to be real if you won't stand up to your fears, because you prefer to be righteous instead. 4. The ego guarantee. This payoff, while seeming a little obtuse, can actually be the most stubborn. Basically it means "I'm not going to open my eyes to look at the beautiful sunset until you prove to me it's there." It's demanding a guarantee before you'll even take action. It involves creating an impossible condition that must be met before you'll do anything. "I'm not going to tackle my fears until you prove to me this will work." Despite the perverted satisfaction you get, the price you pay is the inability to DO and to BE whatever you want. 5. Self-pity. Being scared offers the perfect opportunity to feel sorry for yourself. Who could blame you? People really will give you sympathy when you're trembling with fear. It's a match made in Heaven! Well, made somewhere... "Poor me, I'm scared. I feel so sorry for myself..." Fear is bad enough by itself, but when you open a bottle of pity and - glug, glug, glug - pour it all over yourself, then you *really* become weak... and helpless... and rooted to the spot. Self-pity is like a drug that helps numb the fear. It can take the edge off the fear. But feeling sorry for yourself because of your fear comes with a price - you must abandon self-love and self-esteem. It's impossible to feel love when you're feeling pity. Plus, you ain't getting NUTHIN' done! Inviting fear *and* self-pity into your home might seem like a great party, until you wake up with a hangover and see through blurry eyes just how badly they've trashed your house. 6. Nobility of struggle. We've all been taught - and indeed it's well understood by all - that struggle is a good thing. “It builds character” and all that nonsense. “It’s noble to struggle. It’s how you get ahead in the world.” We don’t mind someone having more money, more success, etc. than we do - as long as they had to struggle to get it. But if they *didn’t* struggle - oh, how we hate ‘em! Certainly the topic of struggle is worthy of at least one lengthy article or two; but for now… Struggle holds little (if any) value. Remember, struggle is wasted effort. The nobility of struggle is a big fat lie. The message behind struggle says - “I’m not good enough. I don’t deserve.” Feeling ‘not good enough’ and thinking you don’t deserve stand as the twin pillars of struggle. Because we’ve all had our deservability and the ‘enough-ness’ beaten out of us in one way or another - struggle starts looking pretty darn attractive. And like a drunken sailor on shore leave, we don’t stop to question the consequences. “What’s really gonna happen if I struggle?” The bottom line: struggling with fear (or anything else) blinds me to my own value and all that attends that value. 7. Manipulation. Being afraid stands as the trump card for manipulating others. “Well, I would’ve done it, but I was afraid.” “I would take out the garbage, but I’m afraid of the dark. You know that.” “I can’t this..” and “I can’t that…”because I’m too scared.” And what can you say? “I only yelled at you and humiliated you because I was so scared.” The message being: I stated the problem, now you deal with it. Many people use their fears to manipulate others. It’s just so tempting, and so EASY. It’s like taking candy from a baby. The price you pay for manipulating with fear: you’ll never be free to live the life of your dreams. 8. Prove something. Many, many people hold the payoff of wanting to prove something. Many believe it’s better to reaffirm what they ‘know’ then to learn something new (or to even let things be different). “See? Told you so! Told you so! I knew it wouldn’t work. Just like I said.” Yep. That really took a lot of ‘wisdumb‘. When it comes to fear, many would like to prove they really are a victim because of events from their past. “My parents made me this way…” “My ex-husband did it to me - and my fear proves it.” Rigid. Judgmental. Arrogant. Stubborn. Lacking perception and wisdom. Punishing. Despite all these features, many people stand determined to prove something with their fears - and it’s always something detrimental. (Why not prove what a wonderful gift this life is? Think how much fun that would be!) The price of proving why you should be afraid? It locks you into place and keeps you petty and small-minded. It’s hard to see the big picture. It’s hard to express your talents. It keeps you from growing and changing. In fact, all these payoffs keep you locked into place with your fears. Remember when I mentioned the value of being the warrior? (In balance with the nurturer and the others…) Warriors know their vulnerabilities, and payoffs make up a large part of that vulnerability. First of all, understand everyone has a payoff for feeling fear. It doesn’t make you a bad person; it shows you’re a human being. Also, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to walk out in front of the bus just so you can blame the bus driver for ruining your life. The payoffs are often general tendencies, rather than situation-specific. Not every single little fear can be traced back to a payoff - but overall we allow our secret desires (to experience our payoffs) to keep the fears going, when we really could reduce those fears instead. If you can accept that you have a payoff (or two or three) for feeling fear, and if you can accept *yourself* for having that payoff, then you’ve just entered a very exclusive domain. A domain exclusive only because it’s self-limiting; you choose whether or not to go there. Nobody else decides. The most exclusive domains are always self-limiting. It takes very little courage to let the country club’s Board of Directors decide if you’re good enough. Courage comes in when *you* have to decide if you’re good enough. You need to feel okay with yourself before you can admit you have a payoff for feeling fear. Very few people possess the courage to admit they have a secret reason for keeping the fear so present in their lives. Very few people reside in that domain. Getting angry at the very idea of ‘a payoff for fear’ provides the easiest way out. It takes no courage at all to discard what I’m saying. Or to read the words and take no action. If you can tell yourself - “Yes, I do have a payoff for keeping the fear around, and that’s okay, because now I know where to focus my efforts” - then you have just sailed over the tallest hurdle to working with fear. You’re quite likely to go on and conquer your fears. You’ll come out the other side to a brand new life, a brand new world, a brand new you. Not a world without fear, but a world with conquered fear, a world with subjugated fear. A new life where you know your boundaries with fear. A new ‘you’ who doesn’t have to tremble at the thought of fear, but instead can respect it - like you respect electricity. If you know how electricity works, you have no need to fear it. Just like fear itself. Remember, warriors know their boundaries with fear, just as electricians know the boundaries of electricity. It doesn’t mean you won’t get shocked by fear every now and then. It just means the shocks won’t be so severe. Knowing your boundary with fear starts with knowing your payoff for keeping it around. My payoff for feeling fear? Self pity. I could feel sorry for myself and there was not one person on God’s green earth who could say a word about it. I mean, come on, I’m scared. I really am. How could you argue with that? Well, the day I admitted my payoff was the day my life changed direction, at least slightly. It didn’t end the payoff. I didn’t stop doing it, or even slow down, for that matter. (And I darn sure didn’t have to tell anyone else about it!) Instead, it helped me get my bearings. It helped align me in the direction I really wanted to go towards in life. It helped me in my journey home. I just had to be okay with even having a payoff. I had to love myself enough, I had to believe in myself enough, to even admit that I *had* a secret reason for keeping the fear a little too alive and making it a little too real. Another payoff I have for feeling fear - I get to avoid acting as a responsible adult. I can stay a kid forever. (It’s called ‘the Peter Pan syndrome’.) “I’ll never grow up, I’ll never grow up, I’ll never…” Because I really AM too scared to be responsible! The option of taking that payoff (like all payoffs) will always be available to me. The option to become scared so I can avoid responsibility (and perhaps to take a little ‘hit’ of pity as well) does not go away simply by its exposure to the light of day, nor by the passage of time. Twenty years from now, I will still have the option of avoiding something by simply being afraid of it. Even if I kill the termites, their tunnels remain. The option of taking a payoff will never go away. I’m not saying this to discourage you, but to help you avoid the trap of making a little progress… declaring yourself healed… and then looking the other way as you go right back into the payoff. Payoffs are insidious. Even admitting you have one can be a difficult proposition. If you can see no payoff, it keeps the fear more nebulous, more of a mystery. But if you do see and admit to yourself that you have a payoff or two, that gives you one more handle on your fear. It shifts the focus, the emphasis, and the power - FROM the fear and TO you. You become the focus and the power. If you have a payoff, then you also have the power to change things. If you have no payoff, then you’re pretty much a victim of fear and there’s little you can do to permanently reduce that fear. Knowing your payoff gives you a handle when you’re writing out your fear story or working with the other techniques we’ll be reviewing. If you have a payoff you can admit to, then you are indeed a warrior.